The Linux Thread - The Autist's OS of Choice

[HalHalliday]

I must say, running the Linux layer to run the Wine-Proton layer to run Steam on FreeBSD is wild. But I'm having a blast.

 

[teriyakiburns]

I must say, running the Linux layer to run the Wine-Proton layer to run Steam on FreeBSD is wild. But I'm having a blast.

I feel like I should rate you deviant for this...

 

[volatile puar]

Adobe Suite analogous software, which I use for work daily. I also use my pc for gaming, but I'm willing to jump through some hoops and sacrifice older games if it means I'll have a smoother, more stable and responsive OS

Libreoffice and Onlyoffice (not Openoffice) are basically drop-in replacements for Office365, you can try them on Windows before you switch if you'd like. If you need Adobe you need Mac or Windows, although things like Photopea or Gimp can do image manipulation. I've heard Photopea is better than Gimp but I don't know if that's still true for Gimp 3. Kdenlive can do video editing, but it's not great, Davinci Resolve is on Linux, but it doesn't work on every system. Single player games mostly work great on Linux through Proton, and I'm pretty sure older games often work better on Linux since Proton is more compatible with older Windows versions than Windows 10/11 are.

 

[Anti Snigger]

Libreoffice and Onlyoffice (not Openoffice) are basically drop-in replacements for Office365, you can try them on Windows before you switch if you'd like. If you need Adobe you need Mac or Windows, although things like Photopea or Gimp can do image manipulation. I've heard Photopea is better than Gimp but I don't know if that's still true for Gimp 3. Kdenlive can do video editing, but it's not great, Davinci Resolve is on Linux, but it doesn't work on every system. Single player games mostly work great on Linux through Proton, and I'm pretty sure older games often work better on Linux since Proton is more compatible with older Windows versions than Windows 10/11 are.

I know this isn't everyone's cup of tea, but, a combination of Markdown/LaTeX for documents and something like pandas+jupyter for spreadsheets ended up feeling very comfortable for me in my undergrad. I had an electronics lab and I was able to auto-generate my lab reports using structured templates, including circuit diagrams, plots, etc. all with one script, and I was able to finish my shit a lot faster than people using google docs or even wolfram.

 

[GrimPortents]

is GNOME just a hazing ritual for new users?

Yes

 

[HalHalliday]

I feel like I should rate you deviant for this...

But does it count if I'm not running wayland as well?

 

[Retarded Weeb]

My main concern and question is how much time it will take me to be able to run MS Office/Adobe Suite analogous software, which I use for work daily.

LibreOffice basically does everything MS Office can and I think it comes on a lot of a distros. If it's not on yours by default, you can generally download it right away with a simple terminal command. The only possible issue with switching I can think of is if you absolutely need your files to be in proprietary MS Office formats, in which case that might be a problem. For Adobe stuff, to be honest the biggest legit knock I've heard people make against Linux is that they can't use Photoshop or other Adobe stuff on it when they need it for work. There are other photo editing programs and the like, but they won't work the same way or output the same file formats (I do know GIMP and Krita can open and edit .psd files, but don't know if they can export in that format cleanly).

I also use my pc for gaming, but I'm willing to jump through some hoops and sacrifice older games if it means I'll have a smoother, more stable and responsive OS.

Older games generally work fine. And if a non-Steam game doesn't want to work via a simple Wine setup, it will generally run just fine if you add it to your Steam library and run it through Proton. Go download Proton-GE from github and stick it in the compatibilitytools.d folder inside your Steam folder and then choose that as your compatibility tool for a given game in Steam and it will usually just werk. The main issue with gaming in Steam isn't older games but online games, since several popular ones have anti-cheat systems that will not let you play when running on Linux.

 

[Aidan]

So what I get from the discussion so far is that there's no consensus on whether Linux is a proper alternative to Windows. Due to performance issues and file size bloat I'm going to be nuking my windows 10 installation soon anyway, whether to reinstall it again, move to windows 11 (something I'm not keen on at all given my experience with win10, as well as complaints I've been hearing about win11) or move to Linux, which I have been researching for the past few weeks, specifically Mint.

The answer for switching from any OS to any OS is always, "it depends." For casual use, all of them are pretty easy to hop between at this point.

Now I understand that there's a steep learning curve but since I'm not retarded I think with some time I'd get to knowing my way around it just fine. My main concern and question is how much time it will take me to be able to run MS Office/Adobe Suite analogous software, which I use for work daily. I also use my pc for gaming, but I'm willing to jump through some hoops and sacrifice older games if it means I'll have a smoother, more stable and responsive OS.

Adobe is a notorious pain point and people tend to use alternatives which vary in quality. MS Office, it really depends on what you need, you may find you don't need MS Office at all or can just throw it into a VM. I think Excel is the only thing you really lose out on from the entire suite. Ironically, you probably won't have to sacrifice any older games as they tend to run better on Linux these days but there are always exceptions. Newer games with modern anti-cheat are the primary reason people have to give up popular games.

I was able to finish my shit a lot faster than people using google docs or even wolfram.

It blows my mind people will slog through Google Docs, MS Office, and almost anything else instead of try something that would be expected to be in their wheelhouse that automates away much of the misery with even better output.

 

[prollyanotherlurker]

So what I get from the discussion so far is that there's no consensus on whether Linux is a proper alternative to Windows. Due to performance issues and file size bloat I'm going to be nuking my windows 10 installation soon anyway, whether to reinstall it again, move to windows 11 (something I'm not keen on at all given my experience with win10, as well as complaints I've been hearing about win11) or move to Linux, which I have been researching for the past few weeks, specifically Mint.

Now I understand that there's a steep learning curve but since I'm not retarded I think with some time I'd get to knowing my way around it just fine. My main concern and question is how much time it will take me to be able to run MS Office/Adobe Suite analogous software, which I use for work daily. I also use my pc for gaming, but I'm willing to jump through some hoops and sacrifice older games if it means I'll have a smoother, more stable and responsive OS.

There are a lot of options for office suites. Idk your needs and I don't tend to use them anyway. But my recommendation. Is to just try them out. See what makes sense for you and you can stick with that.

Installing is simple. Not real work needed. On mint. You can just use the GUI they have. If you don't want to use apt install.

Adobe. I really have no idea.

Also for office stuff. You can use the Microsoft stuff in the browser if you really want to.

 

[byron]

changing how Windows works for the sake of Linux safety,

Have they considered using something like a docker container to address this? I don’t worry about running unsafe shit in a container because …it’s contained. It might as well be an untrusted user.

 

[GNU Abyss]

So what I get from the discussion so far is that there's no consensus on whether Linux is a proper alternative to Windows. Due to performance issues and file size bloat I'm going to be nuking my windows 10 installation soon anyway, whether to reinstall it again, move to windows 11 (something I'm not keen on at all given my experience with win10, as well as complaints I've been hearing about win11) or move to Linux, which I have been researching for the past few weeks, specifically Mint.

Now I understand that there's a steep learning curve but since I'm not retarded I think with some time I'd get to knowing my way around it just fine. My main concern and question is how much time it will take me to be able to run MS Office/Adobe Suite analogous software, which I use for work daily. I also use my pc for gaming, but I'm willing to jump through some hoops and sacrifice older games if it means I'll have a smoother, more stable and responsive OS.

It depends on what you use the computer for and how deep/niche your use cases are. If you're way into Windows and you've got a specialized workflow with all the different programs, it's gonna be a pain in the ass and potentially unmanageable. Same for regular use of specialized, proprietary software for professional use. Normal things like browsing/games are OK. Light office usage too, maybe.

You can bypass the starting point of the learning curve by customizing Windows and fucking around with registry hacking. Bonus points for assembling a custom Windows ISO image with all the bloat removed that works post-install a la Ameliorated Windows.

I know this isn't everyone's cup of tea, but, a combination of Markdown/LaTeX for documents and something like pandas+jupyter for spreadsheets ended up feeling very comfortable for me in my undergrad. I had an electronics lab and I was able to auto-generate my lab reports using structured templates, including circuit diagrams, plots, etc. all with one script, and I was able to finish my shit a lot faster than people using google docs or even wolfram.

LaTeX for STEM stuff is pretty good. MS Office's math equation editor is pure, unfiltered AIDS. A lot of normal office stuff, in my experience, uses Google Docs & Sheets for easy collaboration - when it's not a job related to the government. Seems like regular companies don't give a shit about data collection. Link up your Google account and get back to work on Google's servers, wagie.

 

[⠠⠠⠅⠑⠋⠋⠁⠇⠎ ⠠⠠⠊⠎ ⠠⠠⠁ ⠠⠠⠋⠁⠛]

Gnome 2 was great, especially in that early KDE4 era where that was a buggy mess.

There are still some spregs keeping it going as MATE.

Linux on the Desktop was basically just better back in the day. Gnome 1 & 2 and KDE 1/2/3 were all fantastic and had nice BeOS themes that looked so good back when we had normal resolutions like 1024x768 and 1280x1024. Thank god for XFCE and theme addons like Chicago95 that work nicely on today's ridiculously high resolution screens.

 

[Frederica Bernkastel]

MS Office

I was under the impression MS Office can run via the browser? Adobe stuff will probably work, but you need to be more specific. I don't see why Office wouldn't work either. WINE has come a long way. You can run Elden Ring, Oblivion Remastered, Cyberpunk 2077, STALKER 2, DOOM the Dark Ages and many other newer games work with no problem. Even older stuff like modded Fallout New Vegas, Stalker Anomaly, and SWAT 4 work without issue. Even obscure Japanese visual novels such as Sharin No Kuni and YU-NO. All of this is stuff I've tested on regular ol' wine-staging with WOW64 and winetricks with nothing else. For most stuff, you just need winetricks -q dxvk and vkd3d. Some older games may require dotnet, vcrun or some old d3dcompiler/d3d9 stuff that winetricks can install for you. There's plenty of information on the internet to trouble shoot issues should they arise. And you could always ask people around here for help too.

If you really need that stuff for work, and you can not use alternatives such as Krita/GIMP/Libreoffice for whatever reason - you can either dual boot or use a Windows VM on Linux.

 

[prollyanotherlurker]

Looking at the stuff going on now with xorg. I feel like this fork really needs to actually succeed. If this isn't going to be the slow death of x11.

At least the original project looks to be just about as officially dead as it can be without them actually saying it's a dead project. So now it's going to be on this fork. Or some other fork if this one fails.

 

[Trans Fat 41g]

Isn't OpenBSDs fork, Xenocara, an actively maintained fork? Why can't that be adapted?

 

[Vesperus]

Isn't OpenBSDs fork, Xenocara, an actively maintained fork? Why can't that be adapted?

The impression I get is that Xenocara is just Xorg, but wrapped up to make it easier to plug in to BSD: The nuts and bolts of the code aren't any different.
(With the caveat that I might be a retard)

 

[Trans Fat 41g]

The impression I get is that Xenocara is just Xorg, but wrapped up to make it easier to plug in to BSD: The nuts and bolts of the code aren't any different.
(With the caveat that I might be a retard)

It's a variant of Xorg with reduced privileges. Something that can probably be added over to the X stack on Linux, but whether or not the specific changes applied for security purposes actually work without issue is another question.

 

[Slav Power]

Linux on the Desktop was basically just better back in the day.

It's funny how for all the bickering about how much better Linux is than Windows, both have deteriorated from their glory days a ton, and around the same time as well. GNOME 3 was in 2011, Windows 8 was in 2012. There must've been a paradigm shift there when everyone started chugging retard juice.

Thank god for XFCE

XFCE is great since it rips off the best Windows version ever made by Microsoft.

Like, fuck off with your XP/7 nostalgia or your KDE glazing. Windows 2000 was peak function over form. Zero wasted space, everything laid out in a sane manner, the DE got out of your way so that you could get on with your day using software you need to use, as all operating systems should be. XFCE is basically Win2k's desktop for Linux and it's the most based thing that you could use. Shove your bazillion KDE customizations and your TWM ricing up your ass and embrace desktop computing tradition.

 

[YoRHa No. 2 Type B]

Shove your bazillion KDE customizations and your TWM ricing up your ass and embrace desktop computing tradition.

What if I have made my KDE look and behave just like Windows 2000?
Xfce is nice to use (especially with Chicago95) and I would probably be using it if Wayland wasn't something I found necessary for my setup. (Inb4 the inevitable Wayland sperging)
There is an alpha quality Wayland session being actively worked on so it will be resolved eventually, Xfce development is really slow so I give it a few years.

 

[prollyanotherlurker]

It's a variant of Xorg with reduced privileges. Something that can probably be added over to the X stack on Linux, but whether or not the specific changes applied for security purposes actually work without issue is another question.

I thought they added some more security fixes. I haven't looked at all of the one's they've added in. But I was under that impression at least.

If it's just with reduced privileges. That sounds more like the current version that's running on most linux distros. That uses either systemd, or elogind, to run xorg rootless. But just made to be openbsd specific.

Either way. If xorg is going to go on. It's probably will be worth changing, and fixing as much of it as possible. To address the things wayland addresses. Maybe now that it's not being held back by freedesktop. It will get a chance to actually implement some kind of isolation between programs. Fix problems for people with multiple monitors, work on HDR.

The reason I said if this fork, or another doesn't work out, this could be the actual start of the end for xorg. Is because it's been made pretty clear. Freedesktop isn't interested in doing any more bug fixes on xorg, and what people are going to be running is over time just going to stack up bugs, security flaws found, and not get anything, that people will actually want added. After time goes on, that is really going to start to show, even more than it does already, with the small fixes it has gotten.